


Last Will and Testament of Richard Gansey III

by thesnicken



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: I'm Sorry, gansey's the only character actually in this but the others are talked about, pain and sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 13:54:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6568891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesnicken/pseuds/thesnicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With his days running out, Gansey makes plans for after he is gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Will and Testament of Richard Gansey III

**Author's Note:**

> SORRY. I started thinking about Gansey writing a will and I needed to share that agony have fun. There isn't actually any death in this but I tagged it as major character death cause there is a lot of talk about it. I sort of rambled this out so I'm not sure how well it read or how much sense it makes.

“Dick, my boy. It’s wonderful to see you, as always.”

Gansey was greeted by a slap on the back and a firm handshake which he met with an easy smile that expressed the exact opposite of what he was feeling inside. 

“Wonderful to see you too, Rupert,” Gansey lied. “How are your kids doing?”   


There was some talk from Rupert the Lawyer about how great his children were doing in school, how big they were getting, the sports prizes they had just won. Gansey smiled and nodded and laughed at the appropriate moments until it was over, thinking the whole time about the sheets of paper he had in his pocket. 

"So, should we get to business?” Rupert asked. Gansey sighed with relief and anxiety in one breath as they sat at the large oak desk. “I was surprised when you called me, not many seventeen year olds are thinking about writing a will.”

“Well, you know, I own a car and my own property. I have multiple belongings valuable in both wealth and sentimentality that I want to ensure go to the right people should the worst happen.” 

“But why would you wish to prepare for the worst happening, a healthy young man like you? Is there something I don’t know?”

Yes, there was. The way he leaned forward, frowned slightly, deepened his voice, it told Gansey that he was asking if he was ill, maybe even asking if he was planning to kill himself. No, it was just that fate had decided Richard Gansey lll would die that year and he really wanted to leave behind some order when he was gone. 

“No, nothing like that,” Gansey said with a light wave of his hand. “I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, going through all the hassle of writing a will right now but as I said, I already have some valuable assets to my name and I’m going to college in the fall, those assets are only going to grow. I know how exhausting it has been for my parents to update their wills each time something changes. It just seems to make sense to start early, get these basics that I have now out of the way before more things come in, then I can add to it as need be. And as I said, it’s never a bad thing to prepare for the worst.”

“You are a very sensible man, Dick and I understand what you’re saying but you do know you can’t legally have a will when you’re under eighteen?"   


“I know, I was just thinking I could maybe show you what I have and maybe you could keep a hold of it until my birthday, then we can make it official.” 

Rupert considered it for a moment but Gansey. knew he would do it. He liked to avoid using the Gansey charm too strongly, avoided using his royal stare to bend people's wills if he could help it. But he needed this. It wasn’t entirely necessary to go to a lawyer with the will he had written up, he could have just left it in his drawer for someone to find when they were clearly out his stuff, but he needed to do this properly. His death was coming and he had no idea when or how, there was no way to control a thing anymore except what would happen to his belongings when he was gone.

“Okay, I’ll have a look over it and keep it in my desk for now.”

“Thank you. Oh, and if you see my dad anytime soon, could you not tell him about this? I don’t want him getting upset over it.”

“I won’t mention a thing. When you called me, I thought maybe you were going to ask if I would show you your father's will, make sure you were getting your inheritance.” He laughed shortly.

“Oh, no. I’m not bother by that.” It was the most truthful thing Gansey had said so far that day. 

He took the sheets of paper he had in his pocket and handed them over. They were just one draft of many. He had been writing it on scraps of paper for weeks, altering phrases, jotting down thoughts on napkins that he had to be careful to hide away. He had typed a final draft, printed it, then he had decided to write it out on paper again. When they saw it, he wanted them to see that it was his, that he had spent hours on this so the pages he handed over were written in the same quick scrawl that could be found in his journal, in his latin book. 

“I’m sorry it’s not typed, my laptop broke.”

“That’s fine, I can use this copy for now.”

“It’s not written in a particularly legal language.”

“Well, that’s what lawyers are for. I’ll type this up for you, format it the right way and email a copy over to you.”

“Thanks again, this means a lot.”

He started to stand up.

“No problem, just you let me know if you need anything else.”

“I will.”

“And say hello to your parents for me.”

“I will.” 

And he left. He walked back down the hallway he had entered through, said goodbye to the receptionist as he passed, said hello to someone he recognised in the elevator, nodded at the doorman, got into the Camaro and drove for twenty miles before both he and the car broke down at the same time. 

It was timed perfectly, he had just left the freeway for a deserted road that cut through fields and hills. It would take a while for anyone to come to his rescue, possibly hours but he didn’t mind so much, this was a nice enough place for a breakdown. 

He didn’t cry. He would not let himself cry. He knew it was coming, a day when he would wake up and sob for hours and be incapable of moving but he couldn’t let it happen yet. He was afraid that when he eventually started crying, he wouldn’t be able to stop or get out of bed or finish his job. He just wanted to keep it together for a little bit longer.

He wished now that he hadn’t given that copy of the will to Rupert. After rewriting it, he had shredded the paper copy and deleted the one on his laptop so the one that now sat in the lawyers desk was all there was. He wished he had it now, the last few weeks of writing it had been an odd sort of comfort, it had grounded him. Now he wanted to read over it again, make further amendments. In a few days he would undoubtedly have some alterations to make to it but he could just inform Rupert about them and have it added in. There were still so many blank areas to it that were unsolvable, people he hadn’t been able to place into it the right way. He went over the main point of it in his head as he waited for the engine to cool. 

Ronan was getting the Camaro. It seemed only right, he had pulled it from his mind, it was technically Ronan’s property, it should go back to him. Gansey imagined Ronan doing one of two things with the Pig. The first possibility was that he would love it more than he had ever loved an object, he would care for it, perfectly preserve it in the state that Gansey had left it in, keeping his epipen in the glove compartment, keeping his crap CD’s and his broken umbrella in the trunk. He would mend it when it’s broke, not caring that he was spending more on the Pig than it was worth. He would refuse to get behind the wheel of any other vehicle until it well and truly died and when it did, he would keep it somewhere in the Barns, maybe outside in the sun where vines would grow around it until it became one with nature. Maybe he’d had a special place for it in a barn where he would still clean in and sit inside from time to time, feeling the cracked seats, smelling the past. 

The second possibility was that Ronan would crash it into a ditch and set it on fire. He felt like this was more likely, especially considering that Ronan had already wrecked the Camaro once when he had only been provoked by Kavinsky. What would he do when provoked by the death of Gansey? It was one of his biggest fears, what would happen to Ronan? Adam would go to college, throw himself into work with such force that he would get as near to death by exhaustion as he could while still breathing, but Adam would do that even if Gansey was still there. He’d survive it, a dead best friend would act as an even greater incentive for him. He didn’t know how Blue would react, how she would cope, but he imagined her more on the Adam Parrish side of handling grief than the Ronan Lynch side. She had her family, it wasn't like Gansey was all there was for her.

But  _ Ronan _ . How the hell was he going to come out of this? He would had nothing to incentivise him, what very minimal motivation he had now would vanish. Declan would have to step up, there was no question of that, he would have no choice. When it came down to it, Gansey believed that Declan would do what all it would take to help Ronan. The issue would be more that Declan wouldn’t know _how_ to help and Ronan would not accept anything from him. Maybe he could talk to Declan, tell that he had to prepare himself. Maybe he could leave a note for Ronan telling him that if he did something stupid he would rise from the dead and kick his ass. 

So Ronan was getting the Camaro. It was the last way Gansey could help him, by giving him a car and saying,  _ here, take care of this for me _ or  _ here, go run this into a fence and turn it into a bonfire, just do me a favour and get out of the car before you light it up. _ As much as he did not like to imagine his car in the aftermath of a crash, Gansey didn’t care too much what Ronan did with it, it wasn’t like he would be there to see it.

Adam was getting Monmouth. He had debated with himself over who to give his home to for a while; the most logical heir would be Ronan as the only resident of Monmouth Manufacturing that would be living in a few months but he knew there was no way Ronan would stay there after Gansey was gone so his thoughts had turned to Adam. Gansey knew that giving him such a large and expensive item would only piss him off but what did he care anymore, if there was ever to be a time when Adam would accept Gansey’s help then it would be after he had died. 

He thought of when he had picked Adam up from the hospital after he had pressed charges against his father, he remembered the fight they had had. Adam had said that it was what Gansey had wanted all along, for him to leave his father and moved to Monmouth.

_ Not like this.  _

He still didn’t want it to happen like this, Adam didn’t want to be handed things and Gansey didn’t want to hand them to him,  _ not like this _ . But it was the only way he could do it. He had to know that they would all be okay without him and while he knew Adam would be fine by himself, he still had to give him something. No matter what, everything would always be hard for Adam, getting a scholarship at a school worthy of his talents would be challenging enough without even considering finance. 

Then there was the added fact that Adam would be spending the next few months mourning a friend. While Gansey wasn't vain enough to think that everyone's lives would stop forever the moment he died, he was also sure enough of himself to know that his parting would have an impact on those close to him. Adam was going to suffer because of Gansey, all he had ever wanted to do was make things easier for him but ultimately he would do the opposite, his death would be yet another burden on Adam’s slumped shoulders. The least Gansey could do was offer some form of compensation for the extra stress he was going to cause him. 

Like with Ronan and the Camaro, he did not expect that Adam would live there or anywhere in or around Henrietta come September. The best thing to do would be renting it to someone, possibly as a few smaller apartments. Then again, getting Monmouth in a fit enough shape to rent would probably take time and money. Just selling it would be a strong alternative, it would make Adam a quick profit before going to college and it would be out of his hands as quickly as Gansey was. Gansey thought momentarily that Monmouth Manufacturing would be worth more as a plot of land than a building. If Adam sold it, some real estate developer would buy it up for a cheap price, knock it down and build sleek modern apartments in its place. As with the Camaro, he tried not to think much about the destruction of his most prized possessions. 

Noah was getting the model of Henrietta. It had been a struggle at first, deciding what Noah should inherit. What exactly did you leave a ghost in your will? Then one night, he had been working on the rebuilding of the model while Noah sat across from him, watching, occasionally handing him the glue or placing a roof on top of a toilet roll. In that moment, Gansey had seen the child in Noah who pretended a bottle cap was a person going into the butchers. He played with the untroubled nature of someone who was forever in adolescence. 

Simultaneously, he had seen someone older than himself in Noah. Every now and then, he would tell Gansey that he was doing something wrong,  _ No, that roof is grey not brown...Wait, that place is a florists.  _ And Gansey had to tell him that things had changed, that the roof had been retiled last year and the florists had gone out of business. Then Noah’s face would change and so would Gansey’s as they realised that Henrietta, the place Gansey love for its timelessness, had in fact changed in the seven years since Noah had inhabited it as a living creature. 

He had known then that he would leave the model to Noah, it seemed suitable for him. It was a home they would both spend eternity in, a home they were taken from too soon. Gansey hadn’t done much refurbishment of the model since then, he felt that unlike Ronan, Noah was likely to get more out of building something than burning it. Noah could finish it as his version of Henrietta if he wanted, the version where there was still a Blockbuster and two fishmongers, or he could try to finish Gansey’s Henrietta or even leave it as it is in its state of incompletion. The choice was his.

Of course, there had been the small issue of how he would write Noah into his will, a dead boy couldn’t be an heir. He planned on writing some note into it, something that maybe wouldn’t make sense to his family but would clearly tell his friends that they needed to give the model to Noah. He wasn’t sure how to phrase it yet. 

He had struggled the most with deciding what he would leave for Blue. As with Adam, she would dislike a large expensive item but that didn’t stop him from wanting to give her one. He had felt entirely stuck with her, what piece of his heart was possibly fitting for Blue Sargent? What could mean something in a way that she could hold onto forever but would also allow her to move on? At one point, he had considered looking into having a pair of diamond covered top-siders made for her, just to piss her off. 

Then one day, she had been lounging about Monmouth with him, picking up books and smiling ever so softly, pressing her nose to them and feeling the pages between her fingers. She had picked up his journal and read it. Not just skimmed through it or looked at the images, she had  _ read it _ , cover to cover in the way he had so many times. He had shown that journal to so many people, some more interested than others, but none of them had examined it so thoroughly as she did. 

Anytime someone else had read it, he had looked at their hands around it, their stance, the way they turned the pages. It always looked strange in someone else's hands, they always struggled to hold it open or tie it back up. Gansey had believed it was because it had been made by him, for him, leading to it being foreign in anyone else's grip. But it fitted Blue perfectly, it belonged to her as much as it belonged to him. 

He remembered her returning it to him after he had left it at Nino’s, the look on her face, like she had been woken up. Had they both known even then? Had they known how important the content of that journal would be for them as a pair? Blue must have realised at that time that she would not just give him back the journal and move on with his life in the same way that Gansey had wondered on her importance to his quest. They were not psychics but they knew fate when it hit them and it had struck them both down that day and everyday since. 

Along with the journal, she was getting the vast majority of his books, at least the ones he loved, the ones that had served him in his quest. Some of them were true antiques that he had kept in pristine condition away from the chaos of his home. Others had not been treated with such delicacy, they had been doggered and highlighted and scribbled in. He hadn’t read any of those books in a while, instead he read his own notes, pondered on his words in the margins. Some of them had clearly been the product of his insomnia and made little sense, others now seemed naive in light of all he knew now. Since deciding he would give them to her, he had started reading a few of the books for the last time and added notes for Blue, just small things; explaining a train of thought that he doubted would make sense to anyone other than him, the occasional doodle he thought she might like, a love note or two that he could never say out loud. 

He also had a sapphire necklace that his grandmother had given him. It was a family heirloom so it should really go to Helen but he didn’t care. Blue would hate him for giving her such a ridiculously expensive piece of jewellery but he still didn’t care. In another world, he would have given the necklace to her as a birthday or christmas present and she would complain about it but love it and he would fix it around her neck and she would wordlessly thank him with a kiss. It just so happened that the world they lived in was far crueler so instead he would have to deal with never seeing her in it himself and give the rest of the world the gift of Blue Sargent in fancy jewels. Maybe she would wear it to his funeral for him. 

He had other belongings and other people he wanted to give things to but he couldn’t work it all out. Should he have something for Malory? He couldn’t think of what he might give other than the books that were destined for Blue, not that Malory needed more books. He decided instead on writing a letter that was suitably affectionate but not overly sentimental. He hadn’t written the letter yet, doing so felt far too real. 

And what of his family? What possessions of his would his parents wish to keep? What would Helen want as a memento of her brother? He pictured them in Monmouth with a pile of boxes, slowly going through each stack of his belongings, deciding what they would keep and what they would give to someone else and what would be thrown away. He imagined the pile of things they kept being large at first then every few years they would go through it again, cry for a bit and lessen the pieces of him they kept until he was stripped down to the most basic version of himself in their memories. 

They would keep a toy he had played with as a child and remember a happy boy, they would keep his Aglionby uniform and remember the charming scholar, they would keep his glasses and remember the passionate person who stayed up late wearing them while thinking about the discovery he would make, a discovery that quite possible would be what killed him. Maybe there would be something related to his death that they would hold onto as well, an epipen that failed to save him. Maybe not, not knowing how he would die made it difficult to know if there would be any such item for them to keep.

Over time, he would become just those things, those handful of items kept in a box. No longer a complex character, no longer a flawed individual, just a son and brother taken before his time, reduced down to those objects that they hold onto. Everyone would think back on the nice boy with a smile as bright as his future had promised to be. 

It turned out the engine just needed to cool down for a while and he was able to drive it home after going through all of that in his head, making mental notes on what would need to be fixed. He started planning his funeral too but he kept it simple; he wanted to be buried in Henrietta, that was his only requirement. 

Gansey made it back to Henrietta still in one piece and one day closer to the inevitable. He managed to pull himself off the seat of the car that belonged to Ronan and up the stairs of the building that belonged to Adam. When he got to the door, he rested his forehead against it for a moment, then he leaned his whole body on it, trying to become one with the bones of the structure. It cooled his head a bit to stand there, but did nothing to save him. 

Then he heard a shout inside from Ronan and a laugh from Noah and he dragged himself off the door. He had to be happy now, he had to enjoy every second he got with them and push away the crippling thoughts that threatened to consume him at any moment. This was how they had to remember him in these last days, cheerful and unafraid. He could not leave them with memories of a sad boy. 

He put on a smile and opened the door. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo, if you need something a little cheerier after that then I wrote a one shot the other day that is far happier if you want to check that out. 
> 
> Also my tumblr is http://richardgaynseylll.tumblr.com/ if you feel like checking that out.


End file.
